We have spoken of seal’s flesh as an important article of subsistence to the Eskimo tribes. Our Arctic voyagers and explorers have frequently been glad to nourish themselves upon it, and speak of it as somewhat resembling veal in flavour. Not once or twice, but several times, it has saved the hardy pioneer of civilization from destruction, and the discovery of a stray seal has been the means of preserving a whole expedition.
There is a very striking incident of this kind in the narrative of Dr. Kane. He and his party had reached Cape York on their way to the Danish settlements, after their long but fruitless search for Sir John Franklin. They were spent with fatigue, and half-dead from hunger. A kind of low fever crippled their energies, and they were unable to sleep. In their frail and unseaworthy boats, which were scarcely kept afloat by constant bailing, they made but slow progress across the open bay; when, at this crisis of their fortunes, they descried a large seal floating, as is the wont of these animals, on a small patch of ice, and apparently asleep,—a seal so large that at first they mistook it for a walrus.
Trembling with anxiety, Kane and his companions prepared to creep down upon the monster.
One of the men, Petersen, with a large English rifle, was stationed in the bow of the boat, and stockings were drawn over the oars as mufflers. As they approached the animal, their excitement became so intense that the men could hardly keep stroke. That no sound might be heard, Dr. Kane communicated his orders by signal; and when about three hundred yards off the oars were taken in, and they moved on, stealthily and silently, with a single scull astern.
The seal was not asleep, for he reared his head when his enemies were almost within rifle-shot; and long afterwards Dr. Kane could remember the hard, careworn, almost despairing expression of the men’s haggard faces as they saw him move; their lives depended on his capture. Dr. Kane lowered his hand, as a signal for Petersen to fire. M’Gorry, who was rowing, hung, he says, upon his oar, and the boat slowly but noiselessly forging ahead, did not seem within range. Looking at Petersen, he saw that the poor fellow was paralyzed by his anxiety, and was vainly seeking to find a rest for his gun against the cut-water of the boat. The seal rose on his flippers, gazed at his antagonists for a moment with mingled curiosity and alarm, and coiled himself for a plunge. At that moment, simultaneously with the crack of the rifle, he relaxed his huge bulk on the ice, and, at the very brink of the water, his head fell helplessly on one side.
SHOOTING A SEAL.
Dr. Kane would have ordered another shot, but no discipline could have controlled his men. With a wild yell, each vociferating according to his own impulse, they urged both boats upon the floes. A crowd of hands seized the precious booty, and bore it up to safer ice. The men seemed half crazy, they had been so reduced by famine. They ran over the floe, crying and laughing, and brandishing their knives. Before five minutes had elapsed, each man was sucking his streaming fingers or mouthing long strips of raw blubber.
Not an ounce of this seal was wasted!
The intestines found their way into the soup-kettles without any observance of the preliminary home-processes. The cartilaginous parts of the fore-flippers were cut off in the mêlée, and passed round for the operation of chewing; and even the liver, warm and raw as it was, bade fair to be eaten before it had seen the pot. That night, on the large halting-floe to which, in contempt of the dangers of drifting, the happy adventurers had hauled their boats, two entire planks of the Red Eric were devoted to the kindling of a large cooking-fire, and they enjoyed a bountiful and savage feast.